The first step is to become conscious of the warning signals your body and soul are sending you. Become aware of the unreasonable demands we often make on ourselves. We need to increase our self-awareness and become more observant of our reactions to stress. The second step is action. Now we’re talking stress management, building up power and energy, and dealing with what doesn’t feel right in our lives.
Is it difficult for you to find your way out of stress? This advice may help:
Practice relaxation
Relaxation will help you find your inner balance. It will be easier for you to hear all the messages your body is trying to send, and you will find that you become more in touch with your spiritual and emotional self.
Do something different
Only you can change your life. If you do what you’ve always done, you will get the results you always have gotten. If what you are doing isn’t giving you the results you want, it is time to do something different. See the connection between what you are doing and what you get in return and take full responsibility for the improvements that need to be made.
Listen to your body
Become conscious of the warning signals your body and soul are sending. Increase your degree of self-awareness and become more observant of your reactions to stress. When you don’t feel good, there is always a reason. Take pain seriously. Are you often tired, irritated, bothered by aches and pains? This could be your body’s way of telling you that you need to slow down, take some time off, or deal with whatever’s bothering you.
More fun
Move yourself up on your list of priorities. For some people, easing stress can be achieved simply by allowing themselves to accomplish a little less here and there. Others need to eliminate entirely certain parts of their lives. But don’t cut back on the things you enjoy, don’t cut back on the fun things in life that make you happy.
Live a healthier life
Regular exercise, proper diet, and enough sleep are necessary ingredients for keeping your body in trim. Make sure you get enough sleep. Lack of sleep is one of the major reasons people feel stressed. Start to exercise regularly. If you have a job where you sit still a lot then physical activity will be even more important.
Observe your thoughts
Practice positive thinking, look for possibilities and stop the re-runs of the unreasonable demands you didn’t live up to or any other things you blame yourself for, or beat yourself up about. Negative thoughts lower your achievement level and increase stress; positive thoughts have the opposite effect.
Use the word "no"
Learn to say no to the things you don’t want to do, can’t manage to do, or simply don’t feel like doing. Learn to recognize your own limits. Don’t take on more than you can handle. Take a moment’s time-out, go off to the side, and ask for some time before you give an answer - very few things need to be done, or answered, immediately. Be bold enough to ask for help, and to delegate to others that which needs to be done. You do not need to do everything yourself.
Plan and prioritize
Plan your time. Learn to prioritize. Decide what jobs are more important than others. Do not procrastinate. Write down what you’re going to do so you don’t get stressed by forgetting something. Do one thing at a time.
Laughs is health
Develop your sense of humor. See to it that you get a few good laughs every single day. By laughing we often get a new perspective on the problems that cause stress. See yourself in that humoristic light.
Friends are important
Take good care of your friendships, they are very important. We all need friends we can discuss our worries and problems, as well as share our joys with. Talk to someone you trust about the things you experience as stressful or draining.
Change your attitude
Realize that stress is not caused by the problems themselves. It is your attitude, your interpretation of what is happening that is the answer to the question of whether you will become stressed or not. Dare to change the things that can be changed. Accept that which cannot be changed. Either change the situation or change your attitude about it.
Time of your own
Make sure you take a moment for yourself every day. Time for yourself is not something you get; it’s something you have to create yourself. Prioritizing your time is a choice, and just like all the other choices you make in your life, you are solely responsible. Enough time to yourself is one of the many roads leading to a better and more enjoyable life.
Plan time for rest and recreation
Plan pauses in your life. Find your own ways to relax, to rest, and to recharge. You might take a walk, read a book, take a bike ride, listen to music, go to a movie, or do something else nice that you thought you’d do someday, that you really could do right now.
Solve your conflicts
Unsolved conflicts that just lie there gnawing away at you use up enormous amounts of energy. Realize that you are wonderful, just as you are. Be as tolerant with yourself as you are with everybody else.
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Re-printed with permission from Eva Johansson
Three causes of negative stress are lack of control, lack of support from people around you, and lack of meaning in what you are doing. A lot of people try to fill up the emptiness they feel in their lives with more and more work.
Studies have shown that stress is not dangerous, as long as the affected person feels that he or she is able to change the situation, that is, that he or she has a certain amount of control over what is happening.
Stress reactions
Stress is the body’s reaction to every demand made on it and is therefore something completely necessary and natural. We react differently to these demands. A stress reaction can cause us to feel everything from hopelessness to rage. Feelings of impatience, anguish, boredom and frustration can also be part of the stress experience. Outwardly, our reactions are noticeable when we unconsciously tense up our shoulders, furrow our brow or bite our teeth together. Or we might get a lump in our throat, a knot in our stomach, a stiff neck or feel pressure over our chest.
Fight or run
What happens in the body during these reactions happened also millions of years ago in our human-like ancestors. At that time, these reactions were quite adequate. Survival was dependent upon the ability to swiftly and powerfully react to danger. They prepared the body for battle, or for escape. This was the body’s way of producing that extra power necessary for us to be able to choose survival instead of death. Physical stress reactions made us stronger and more resilient in battle, or faster and more tenacious in flight.
Our alarm system is on
Today, most of us are rarely exposed to tangible physical danger. Yet the alarm system is more active than ever before. Our brains cannot tell the difference between real and imagined dangers. The alarm system is activated even by emotional distress, such as when you feel threatened, upset, scared, embarrassed or unloved. A bad day at the office, an argument, a job interview, a painful diagnosis, or meeting an angry dog - all produce the same physiological reactions.
Totally drained instead of burned-out
Burnout is an expression we often hear today. It is a word that is often used carelessly instead of worn out, stressed, hurried, overworked, overwrought, strained, tired, depressed, angry, unappreciated or unloved. A better expression to describe the state is totally drained. Being "totally drained" gives us more of a feeling of hope, of eventually being refilled and healed than being "burned-out".
Being totally drained, or burned-out, is a serious psychological, physical, and mental state where we collapse, and it takes quite a lot for us to get there. It is not something that just hits us like a virus; it is something we have been working on for a long while. People who are totally drained have given so much, and been replenished so little, for such a long time, that one day the whole system just says stop.
Several stages before collapse
A person who becomes totally drained passes through several stages before the catastrophe becomes a fact. Life doesn’t suddenly one day just overwhelm you. Before that happens there have been plenty of symptoms that have been neglected.
These symptoms might be headaches, stomach problems, colds that never go away, irritation, moodiness, joylessness or depression. Long-term stress drains us of our inner resources such as creativity, patience, and sense of humour. Only if a person ignores these initial signals will the enormous, chronic, depressing fatigue, where the body collapses from total lack of resources and energy finally take over.
What people who have broken down because of stress have in common is that they all have felt a deep fatigue, and at times lost their ability to remember, understand or reason. Other symptoms may be physical, such as increased sensitivity to pain and infection. Another common result is that the person is less socially active, pulls away from friends, and isolates himself or herself.
Can be cured
Researchers are still unclear on exactly what sort of connections between mind and body lead to stress-related conditions such as burnout, fibromyalgia, posttraumatic stress, chronic fatigue and depression. But they are in agreement that these conditions can be cured.
Positive stress
Don’t fool yourself into thinking that a stressless life would be the epitome of happiness, if you do, you will have forgotten the positive side of stress.
Positive stress is vital and increases your power. It can be very intense, but is usually short-lived, such as meeting a deadline, catching a bus, or making a speech. You work best when you feel stimulated and excited, not when you are bored, or feel limited. Positive stress is the answer to demands that feel inspiring, manageable and challenging, demands that don’t feel like they have been forced on you. Positive stress makes you creative and constructive. Negative stress, on the contrary, is paralyzing and destructive.
Negative stress
Negative stress is what you feel when you are unable to fill the demands that come from inside yourself and/or the demands and expectations your environment makes on you. It is easy to feel insufficient or threatened both physically and mentally. If this is repeated often, you will eventually be affected by it negatively.
Remember that stress is not dangerous, as long as the affected person feels that he or she is able to change the situation, that is, that he or she has a certain amount of control over what is happening. Actually, both self-esteem and creativity are enhanced by challenges we have control over.
Your attitude causes stress
The ability to tell the difference between what you can control and what you cannot, and act accordingly is fundamental to stress management. Even more basic to stress management is the insight that stress is not caused by the problems in themselves. It is your attitude, your interpretation of the problem that causes stress.
Understanding that the real cause of stress is not disappointment, fear, negative expectations, or the people around you but your own attitude toward these things makes it easier to control your reaction to the perceived stress.
Take control
You need to either actively work toward changing the situation or decide to change your attitude toward it. It is when we feel "I choose my life" that we are the drivers on the journey through life; we have more control.
http://www.lifesdriverslicense.com/en/
Re-printed with permission from Eva Johansson
